Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Pop

My dad was a son of a bitch, not a lovable old codger son of bitch, but a mean son of a bitch. He was mean to us as kids and he was mean to our mother.  When I was growing up it felt as if he blamed us for the drudgery of his life and he was making us pay for it.  He was  a man of incredible talent in his own mind, superior to just about everyone, but it had never come to much and that was our fault.

From September 1944 to May 1945 my Father flew 45 missions in a B-26 Marauder light bomber. I was born in 1946. Growing up and living with my dad was hell, he was always angry and disturbing him in any way was to be avoided at all costs. . Many years later I was talking to Eric, my Ranger partner at Angel Island. Eric’s father had been an infantryman and his unit marched cross Europe and into Germany one bloody battle after another. Eric and I had similar experiences growing up with a badly damaged parent. I think it was a moment of insight for both of us. We put a name to it, PTSD, Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Soldiers, Victims of Abuse, who go through terrible things and do what they have to do at the time and then pay the price for the rest of their lives with crippled souls.

My father was born in St. Louis. He grew up in Springfield probably. He never admitted it but by the end of his life his mind drifted back to Springfield. 2; His last days he lived in a dream world with his mother nearby and in Springfield. His  great grandfather had immigrated to Brinktown midway between St. Louis and Springfield from Ireland.  At 14, my father went to Christian Brothers College, a high school in St. Louis.  I think his St. Louis origins may have been fabricated to hide that he was from the country.  He was a young man of great promise, or at least that’s what we got from people who knew him, my grandmother, his brother and even my mother. 

His brother, Ed, greatly admired Jack and Uncle Jack was a favorite of Ed's children.  One time he came home from a family crisis in St. Louis with stories of how wonderful Ed, his wife, and particularly their children were.  It sounded to us like we could never measure up.  I think my father admired his brother as well, admired what he had done in life and how he was able to get sober and be there for his family.   

My father was born in 1916 to Helen Cullen and John Duggan.  We learned Helen was actually Ellen after she died. Apparently the name Ellen was too Irish.  My eldest sister is named Ellen.  My grandmother was raised by the McGlynns, her mother’s sister and her husband.  My grandmother  must have used their surname, because my grandfather always called her Mac. 

When I first met my grandfather he was a senile old man.  Before the booze destroyed him he had been a salesman and an aircraft worker.   My Uncle Ed, my father’s only brother, was born in Seattle when my grandfather worked for Curtis Wright.  My father told stories about organizing for the UAW, which my grandfather must have been active in in the 1930s. 

My father’s grandfather, Grandpa McGlynn died in an auto accident in Springfield.  My grandfather was driving and he was drunk.  My father was in the car.    

My father met my mother in 1939.  Pictures show he was a handsome young man.  She was quite a knockout herself.  He had had a number of jobs, working in a foundry and on a railroad, as a gandy dancer, he claimed.  Both jobs were probably from relatives.  He also claimed to have been a prize fighter.  From his notebooks, full of cartoons, quotes and his thoughts, I learned he was very aware of what was going on in the world, particularly in Europe.  My mother got pregnant around December, 1939, and they got married February 3, 1940.  The early pregnancy, of course, was a family secret.  Ellen, my eldest sister,  learned her real birth date when she was 18.  I heard it from her years later.  Ellen’s public birthday was October 31, 1940 three months after she was born.  That was typical of my father to choose Halloween.  He liked mean little jokes like that.

Stories in our family were like images in a fun house.  The truth was there somewhere, but it got distorted, twisted, unrecognizable, looking like something else.  My mother would embellish, create, cover over and make herself the hero.  My father took his facts, twisted them, turned them upside down and made them into a maze.  The real story was hard to find.  In my own mind, I've tried to strip them down to what I know and reconstruct them in a way that makes sense.  Neither of my parents were reliable sources for anything that happened.  The most important events were often secrets and by mutual consent discussed.

My parents came to California after they were married.  I think my grandmother was not happy about my mother and they were never friends.  My father worked at Lockheed Aircraft and then enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942.  He didn’t have to go.  He was 25 years old and had a year old child and one on the way.  In my opinion, he ran away from home.  I don’t think my father ever dealt with anything like a man the whole time I knew him.  When his brother was dying and his niece and nephew appealed to him to come to San Diego, he stayed home.  I think he was a spoiled kid, his whole life.

He went to Butler University in Indianapolis as an Army Air Corps Cadet.  From there he went to San Angelo, Texas, Goodfellow Field, and Lake Charles Army Airfield, Louisiana for training as a Bombardier/Navigator on a B-26, light bomber.

In September, 1944 he was assigned to to the 497th Bomb Squadron of the 344th Bomb Group at Stansted, England and was there in time for the Battle of the Bulge.  He flew 45 missions and received the Air Medal for it.  At discharge he was still a 2nd Lieutenant but had been the lead navigator for his squadron.  He flew from England, France and then Belgium.  He flew bombing missions over France, Germany and Czechoslovakia.  When he was older and very drunk he would talk about George Mitchell, the pilot of their plane, whose death as he told it in fragmented references he was responsible for.  I knew whatever it was it had eaten at my father his whole life.  I thought my father had somehow caused Mitchell’s death by being a coward. 

After he died I found a letter.  The exact opposite was true.  On May 1st, seven days before the end of the War, my father and his plane were flying a bombing run over Germany.  Captain Mitchell was the pilot. The Luftwaffe had dropped out of the War but the anticraft fire over German cities was horrendous. The most dangerous part of a mission is the actual bombing run when the target is sighted and the plane levels out and flies straight toward the target until the bombs are dropped.  In those few minutes the bombardier is flying the plane.  The plane is a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire from below.  The War was won and it was the last days when the navigators on many bombing runs never found their targets or would wave off in the deadly moments before they dropped their bombs. 

My father, who for all his faults was a man of absolute integrity, was the navigator/bombardier on a bombing run at the end of the War in which Captain George Mitchell from Georgia lost his life.  My father had a letter from Mitchell’s parents thanking him for his loyalty to their son.  When I read the letter I understood the story my father told in drunken fragments.  He didn’t feel guilty because his cowardice killed his friend but because his bravery or pig headedness had killed his friend.    

By the time I came along my father was a grim man who barely talked at all.  He listened to the radio, he read foreign magazines, he smoked cigars and he drank beer.  Most of the time he was holed up in a back bedroom, Mr. D’s room, with his radio, phonograph and books.  We had to be quiet when he was there so we wouldn’t disturb him.

When I was three or younger I remember I was holding my Teddy Bear outside the car feeling the wind in my hair and I dropped it.  He wouldn’t stop or go back for it.  When we were together, he had to take care of me or for some reason my mother wasn't there, it was like I didn't exist.  Anything I did was an imposition on him.  I would walk beside him and try to engage him in conversation and he wouldn’t say anything.  The one time we played catch he was so critical of my throwing and catching that we never played again.  I was three years old. 

He obviously had great aptitude for many things.  He learned to speak French during World War II and read French magazines and books.  In the 1940s and 1950s in California he learned to speak Spanish, with dictionaries, how to books, records and radio he listened to.  He listened to Dodger games in Spanish.  My father never spoke to anyone very much.  He was a very taciturn man.  When I learned to speak Spanish he wouldn't speak Spanish with me.  I doubt he spoke Spanish at all.  When I forced him to, it was halting and slow.  He just didn’t have enough practice, but he did read it and write in Spanish very well.  In French it was the same thing, whenever there was anyone around who spoke French we would proclaim my father’s fluency but he would refuse to speak French to anyone who was fluent.  I don’t think he had any confidence in either French or Spanish. 

 At one time or another my father had been an art student, I think before and or after the War.  There were a number of oil paintings around the house and they were very good.  His palette was muted, dark colors, like a Dutch master palette and he did portraits.  I like them better than my uncle's paintings.  My uncle made a living as an artist and was good at it.  He too had a dark palette for his traditional oils and portraits.  His Chinese paintings were bright and colorful.   

My father knew books, literature, opera, history and philosophy.  Somewhere he had gotten the start to a very good education.  The whole time I knew him I never saw him read a book.  He had a small stack  of books that included dictionaries and a foreign magazine. He didn’t say he was reading them, he “studied” them.  For Christmas one year I gave him John Steinbeck’s book, “Travels with Charley.”  I know he never read it. 

It went on like this through high school, from the 1940s until the 1960s.  And then there seemed to be a crack in my father’s wall.  It began when my older sister, Joan and I began to drink beer with him.  I was sixteen.  We would sit and drink beer until it was gone and we would talk.  He would make jokes and tell stories and after having been ignored by my father for my whole life, it felt wonderful to be his buddy while we drank.

Maybe time had diluted his bitterness and defeat from the War on.  When he was 50, he started UCLA Extension and took an engineering certificate course.  For years he went to night school and he completed the certificate program.  My father was still bitter and mean but from the 60s on there was more life to him.

When I went in the service, when my sons were born, at a few times, he even expressed some warmth and affection.

I got sober in 1983 when I was 37 years old. My father got sober eight years later when he was 74 years old. After that things really changed between us.

In April, 1991 I got a frantic phone call from my mother that Pop was in the hospital and they thought he might have had a stroke.  By this time, my parents who were getting older were leaning on me during crises.  I went to the hospital and talked to the staff.  They couldn’t figure what had happened to my father.  He had lost consciousness while walking.  It wasn't a stroke and they weren’t sure what it was.

The doctor asked me about my father’s medical history.  I asked him if my father or mother had told him that my father was an alcoholic.  He said, “No.”

The next thing I looked down the hallway and there was my father trying to stand on one foot.  The doctor was giving him what looked like the classic Highway Patrol field sobriety test.  He failed.  The diagnosis was alcoholic seizure and the doctor told him he could go into addiction treatment downstairs or be discharged.  The doctor would not treat him if he didn’t go to the alcohol unit.  He said it would be a waste of time.

The doctor came out and talked to my mother, my sister Joan and I.  He said my father had had an alcoholic seizure and that there was an alcohol treatment program in the hospital downstairs and that he would not treat him unless he went to it.  It’d be a waste of time. He told us that once my father had alcohol seizures it would only get worse eventually be fatal unless he stopped drinking.

Everyone seemed to be in a panic and I asked my sister and mother if they wanted me to talk to Pop.  They said, yes.

I went in and told my father, “The Doctor says you  can go downstairs for alcohol treatment or you’ll die.  It’s your choice, what do you want to do?”

My father said in a whisper, “I guess I’ll go downstairs.” and he did.

Not only was my father an alcoholic, but my mother was as well.  The family story as she told it was my father was the designated alcoholic and my mother was doing her best to cope with it and make things good with the family.  Of course, she drank as much as he did.  So when my father went downstairs my mother was all in favor of it.  She had wanted him to do this all along, she said.  But after a day or two, the staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital wanted my mother to join the program as well.

My mother’s  creature as the Irish call alcoholism, went crazy, as if it were being exorcised by a priest.  She went in every direction for a day and then had nothing to do with the program.  For the thirty days my father was in treatment, I was his family and attended family therapy with him.  We both talked about being raised by alcoholic fathers.  It was a program that was classic AA and prepared the patients to go to regular AA meetings afterwards.  The AA group that met at the hospital was very active and run by alumni of the treatment program.

My father got sober and stayed that way mostly until his death 11 years later.  My mother never had anything to do with it and after a few months was able to discourage my father from going to meetings.  I think she got him off the wagon once but he got back on almost immediately.  He stayed sober.

I treated my father as a fellow alcoholic.  We openly acknowledged the bond between us and felt it strengthen and grow.   I could see that he was a good and sincere man and like myself had had his difficulties growing up and coping with life and had been as devastated by his disease as I had been by mine.  I think my father was very proud of my sobriety and his own.

All that tension growing up and the meanness melted away.  He was a comfortable and sweet old man.  Sometimes he’d have flashes of anger and cynicism but they were only flashes, not smoldering storms.  He was much more tolerant of my mother than I was able to be.

It’s odd to me that two us, my eldest sister1 and I, remember our father fondly and miss him, while at the same time I have no such feelings for my mother and still haven’t forgiven her for the way she treated us.

In February, 2003 he died.  He had had many bouts with various cancers and survived. In the end he succumbed to leukemia.  His last five months he was very weak.  He and my mother were in an assisted living in Phoenix near my Ellen and her wife Karen. They watched out for them and took care of my father at the last.  We visited, we talked and it was a wonderful time for us.  One of the last visits I made to him I was doing most of the talking and then he asked, "What happens if I get well?"

I said, "Don't worry about it, Pop.  It won't happen."

Another time we got to talking about favorite words and he said his favorite word was "Enough."  We said our good-byes a few days before he died and easily told each other, “I love you.”

***

For the genealogist:  My father was John Lawrence Duggan born August 26, 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri.  His father was John Harold Duggan, and his mother Ellen Cullen raised McGlynn probably of St. Louis. Grandpa McGlynn had a drayage business in St. Louis with a partner.  My father's paternal grandmother was Catherine Walsh Duggan from Ireland or Liverpool.  There was a story she had been a servant in Liverpool before she came to the U.S.  She was called the Duchess and I got to know her a little bit.  My father's paternal grandfather was John Andrew Duggan  His paternal great grandfather was Michael Duggan of Brinkstown, originally from Ireland immigrated through New Orleans. The family tree I have prepared by Karen Looney, my sister-in-law, has John Andrew Duggan and his son John Harold Duggan both born in St. Louis, but says Michael, the immigrant, was married and died in Brinkstown. Springfield is in there somewhere.   



FRIDAY, MAY 4, 2012

Pop - an addendum


I call this biography, The Stories I Tell Myself.  I believe the stories we tell ourselves, the family myths, the misinformation, the fanciful, and the made up are as important as the facts.  So this biography, the essays that make it up, are the stories I tell myself.  I’m not worried about having all the facts.  We fill things in, we tell stories, we imagine the way it might have been, we smooth over the gaps.  I try to be as honest as I can be, but it doesn’t surprise me that sometimes my own stories aren’t as factual as they should be.   

When I was drinking I didn’t tell myself I was a drunk.  I told myself I was a good person doing the best I could.  I enjoyed a few beers, convivial company, and it wasn’t my fault some people weren’t as Irish as I was.  When I got sober that story failed me.  Sometimes growth is admitting the facts to be true.    

I have stories about my family and they’re a pastiche of what I’ve been told, what I’ve learned about my family and the history of the time.   

Since my father’s death I’ve always thought there was a good chance that he was born in Springfield, Missouri.  My father was a dissembler.  He never told the truth straight out.  Either did my mother, but my father would twist things and embellish them so that  I’ve always questioned his facts.  Well the facts are that my father was born in St. Louis.  He never told us about growing up in Springfield and now I know he did but he wasn’t born in Springfield.    

I knew Michael Duggan my great great grandfather had been a farmer in Missouri and I thought it was Springfield.  I’ve since learned it was Brinktown, Missouri. 

Facts are a good thing.  The world is full of fact checkers and I expect somewhere in my descendants there will be someone capable of correcting all of my errors.  If they do I hope they will add them to these stories.  Between the facts and the stories are the myths that make us who we are.  I always appreciate knowing the facts, but I’m Irish enough to never let the facts stand  in the way of a good story.

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Don't Worry About It



Paloma is two and half years old.  If you have children this age or remember those days, the answer is yes, we are in the midst of potty training. 

I don’t think it’s hard but it is fraught with high hopes and frequent disappointments.  Right now in our household Paloma, Suzette and I devote a lot of time and attention to body waste.  We talk about poop, we read about poop and we think about it.  Poop in our house is a remarkable thing.  If Paloma is around she likes to participate in any visits to the bathroom.  She has appointed herself the Official Family Flusher.  If Suzette or I should inadvertently flush our own toilet, it causes a family crisis and requires a retake and apologies. When she flushes the toilet, she checks it and comments on our product.   “Daddy made big poop.” 

Paloma has her own pink potty which she likes to sit on bare bottomed and watch television or set it up at the sliding glass doors to the veranda and watch the world outside, her legs spread and her feet up on the window.    Even though we’re on the sixth floor of an apartment building, we’ve told her this is something she may want to stop doing in a few years.  It’s OK for now. 

Paloma has pooped in the potty now and again.  She often pees in the potty, in fact more often in the last few days.  We’re still celebrating each event.  At her daycare we’re told she does use the toilet and pees and poops in it, though not all the time. 

All of this effort is with the understanding that when she is ready to use the toilet on a regular basis, she will.  What we do before is just practice and shouldn’t be rushed or pushed, encouraged but not to make too big a deal of it.  Everything positive, no trauma.

Paloma is good about telling us when she has pooped but she doesn’t like to be interrupted while she’s doing it and she particularly doesn’t like to have her diaper changed.  A year or so ago she had problems with constipation.  It took us awhile to get past it.  A small daily dose of stool softener recommended by the pediatrician has taken care of it.  But there for awhile she was having considerable trouble around bowel movements and her little bottom was sore.  The whole process of pooping, cleaning her up and changing her was difficult and she would cry through it. 

These troubles left their mark.  She’s better now but for awhile she would tense up when cleaning her after a poop.  It was hard, accompanied with tears and required overcoming her resistance to opening her legs.  So even today she doesn’t like having her poopy diapers changed.

This last Sunday I smelled a familiar and pungent odor as she passed by me.  “Did you poop your pants?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. 

“Should Daddy change your pants?”  I asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, in an excellent Tony Soprano impersonation. 

Suzette and I are sure by the time Paloma starts junior high, she will be potty trained.  It will happen.  Maybe even soon, but in the meantime,    “Don’t worry about it.”    

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Another Son, an Honorable Discharge and Home


Shortly after I got home from Lakenheath hospital Cathy decided we needed to have another child.  We needed to take advantage of the healthcare we had in the Air Force or as it turned out, what we had in England.   So we did.  

The idea was that she was going to have her baby at home with a midwife.  She did all of the pre-natal with an English doctor and midwife and the pregnancy went well.  Our home was visited and her pregnancy and health were evaluated and we were approved for a home birth.  The night of May the 9th I called the health service and Mrs. Roselli, the midwife we had already met, a Polish woman, arrived at the house and took over.  She had a nurse with her from Kenya.  Our friend Anna came over to help out.  Later a doctor arrived.  Mrs. Roselli said he wasn’t needed but came because there was nothing else to do. He knew to stay out of Mrs. Roselli's way.  

In the middle of the night, the wee hours of May 10th, the Kenyan nurse delivered the baby under Mrs. Roselli’s careful eye.  During the birth the doctor sat in the corner and made comments.  Most of the night before that I sat in the dining room with Anna and drank Vodka and lime juice.  Mrs. Roselli made a pointed remark about her own teetotaler status, but I don’t remember being drunk, just excited.  I went into the bedroom and stood by the side of the bed and watched the birth. 

I remember when the baby was born they laid him down on the bed beside Cathy and he was all blue and didn’t move.  For a terrible moment I thought he was stillborn but then he screamed and his little body bloomed in color.  For me it was an instant of death and resurrection in less than a minute.  They attended to him and we had a new son.  Ted, Edward Charles Duggan, screamed for the rest of the morning.  When he was awake he screamed.  He definitely let the world know he had come.  He had a good voice. 

We were exhausted.  The nurse and midwife cleaned up and left.  We were at home, we had a new baby in the bed and it was done.  After the sun rose I brought Sean in, Sean was 2 years old, to see his new brother.  Later that day another nurse came to visit.  I left and went to register the birth at the registry office downtown. 

I think it was that summer that I was finally accepted by the Airman Education Commissioning Program, something I had applied for years before.  If I wanted to stay in the Air Force they would send me to college and then I would be an officer and serve another six years.  I was ready to get out.  It had seemed attractive half way through my enlistment but with only months to go it was no longer attractive.  I was accepted at UCLA and San Francisco State.  We decided it was better to return home to LA and so I made plans to attend UCLA. 

The last few months in the service were very comfortable.  We loved England and we had learned to live with the Air Force.  Being a staff sergeant was much easier than being an airman. 

We left England in August and arrived in Los Angeles in time for one of the hottest periods ever in LA.  I remember one day the temperature reached 127° in the San Fernando Valley.  We bathed Ted our new baby in a cool bath and after one visit to my parents in Burbank stayed in El Segundo with Cathy’s parents where the temperature was only in the high 100s. 

We found an apartment in North Hollywood in a subsidized housing complex and I started UCLA in October.    

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Living with Mania


What I had was a manic episode.  I was and probably am a manic-depressive or at least have that type of personality.  Now it’s called bipolar disorder. I prefer manic depression. 

My manic episode was bad, probably unloosed by the Valium I took.  By the time I got to the hospital I had been going so hard and so long I was at the virtual end of my physical endurance.  I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t stopped and everything kept going faster and faster.  The doctors worried that I would crash and they wouldn’t be able to stop me, that I might run myself to death.    

I surprised everyone by how quickly the Lithium seemed to work.  I took Lithium for a few months after that and then stopped because it made everything taste bad.  I was a little depressed for a few months afterwards, but then life resumed.  Working at Personnel was enjoyable.  Being promoted to Staff Sergeant was wonderful. 

After the service I waited for it to happen again.  And it didn’t.  Like a lot of manic depressives or bipolar people I treated my highs and lows with alcohol, beer and wine, and then later martinis and Irish coffees. I was comfortable with depression.  Highs scared me.  Bipolar and alcoholism are related somehow.  One doesn’t cause the other but they seem to go hand in hand together.  When I got sober I worried that I wouldn’t be able to  handle the highs anymore, but it wasn’t a problem.

One time after I was sober I really got out there.  During the Los Angeles Civil Disturbance I began working in City Hall and for the first few days, everything was hectic and intense.  I didn’t get any sleep and the little sleep I got was disturbed.  I began to get crazy and grandiose.  I got some sleep and life seemed to become more normal.  It seemed that way to me.  There were some bad signs that I was still functioning in a different way.  I broke up with my girlfriend and fiancĂ©.  We had lived together for over a year.  I borrowed money from retirement plan because I needed things.  Looking back on it, it was more serious than I thought at the time, but it ended with enough sleep and normal work.    

When I took the psych test to become a peace officer at San Francisco Juvenile Hall, it showed up on the test and I explained my service experience to the psychologist and I was cleared to work in Juvenile Hall.  When I took the psych test to become a Ranger, it came up again.  This time I thought it was the end of my application.  They asked for my service records and I got them.  They looked at my service medical file and set up an appointment to talk to a psychologist.  He cleared me to become a police officer.

I am surprised it never happened again with the exception of 1992.  I spent many years waiting for the other shoe to fall.  I think it was closely related to my alcoholism.  When I got sober I worried about it, but life seemed easier and I became more confident. 

The mania I experienced in 1992 during the LA Civil Disturbance scared me.  I had really gotten out there and made a fool of myself with people I worked with.  It seemed OK while it was going on.  It was only in retrospect I began to realize it had been full blown mania and how serious it had been.  When I became a Ranger and was doing call outs, searches and other crises at all hours I was even more careful to make sure I got enough sleep.  Proper sleep for me has been the cure for the mania of manic depression. 

The depression is easier.  I’ve handled it with physical exercise and just showing up.  I lower my expectations for work and just wait it out.  I have had thoughts of suicide but never taken it very far.  Depression has always felt to me like a gathering in, something like a renewal, whereas mania is an expenditure, a letting loose, a draining.  It feels good while it’s happening but it has a hell of a hangover.  I think I may have had a manic episode in college.  Part of college felt like one long manic episode and it is hard to tell the difference between insanity and late adolescence. 

I’m glad I had the experience.  I think it made me more empathetic, made me aware how vulnerable I am and how vulnerable we all can be, how tenuous our hold on reality actually is.  I think it’s what makes me treat people in extreme circumstances like human beings, whether it be insanity or incarceration.  I know even in the insanity there was an I there.  I got to come back.  Like sobriety, sanity, being able to function, is something I’ve always been grateful for. 

A little bipolar or manic depressive is just who I am.